


throw, bounce, catch

by jaggedwolf



Category: The Strange Case of Starship Iris (Podcast)
Genre: Canon-Compliant till S2E2, Character Study, Gen, Injury Recovery, Introspection
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-29
Updated: 2021-01-29
Packaged: 2021-03-15 03:21:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,166
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29057370
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jaggedwolf/pseuds/jaggedwolf
Summary: On the way to Telemachus, Park engages in an unassigned exercise.
Comments: 11
Kudos: 24
Collections: TSCOSI Week 2021





	throw, bounce, catch

There’s no more work for Park to do.

Krejjh is flying the ship towards Telemachus. McCabe isn’t likely to make any particularly unwise choices while they sleep. The remaining tension among the crew is another reason to retreat to the strange solitude of his room.

There is only the standard grey wall facing him, the single bunk he sits on, and the rubber ball he holds. A simple toy, discovered when taking inventory of the _Iris_ ’s supplies, easily slipped into a pocket when the crew was distracted as they often were. It isn’t that he thinks they’d object.

He throws the ball, watching it bounce off his targeted spot on the wall, and catches it comfortably in his palm.

It’s that he preferred it didn’t become a topic of discussion. Hypocritical, perhaps, to desire privacy after all his efforts with Project Sentinel, but Park has never pretended to be a moral man. His IGR-issue shirt and jacket hang carelessly from a nearby corner of the bunk. Shelly would laugh in mock-amazement if she saw that, she’d-

Throw, bounce, catch.

A manageable exercise, after several days at it.

He’s secured the area. The wall opposite him is shared with the storage room he found this ball in, the wall behind him with Patel’s room. Patel was last seen talking with the captain in the kitchen. If anyone walks by these three rooms, he will hear their footsteps before they comprehend what it is he’s up to.

Throw, bounce, catch.

Not that it matters. Again, there’s no more work for him to do. The others have better and more recent intelligence than him on their destination, including McCabe. He’s re-assessed his gun (mint condition) and his ammo (could be better). Life on the _Iris_ is remarkably low on paperwork. If he isn’t careful, he’ll soon be journaling or something horrendously similar.

Throw, bounce, catch.

Document thoroughly, but never so thoroughly as to be caught in contradiction, even when it’s a contradiction forced by regulation.

Throw, bounce, catch.

Not like that helped him. Not like leaving incriminating material is a current concern.

Throw, bounce, catch.

Wouldn’t make things worse for him or Shelly.

Pause.

Was it the eye, or the leg, or the rest of it, or all of it put together that made them comfortable with letting him live? Did they think he’d never be as capable as he used to be, a somewhat useful ship whose engine would sputter helplessly till its inevitable death?

Squeeze.

Park is accustomed to being...not underestimated, no, but assumed inflexible. Incapable of adapting. Guaranteed to be unmoored by novelty. An amateur’s conflation of the man with his ability to follow regulation’s lead. He’s never resented it before, content with his rise up the ranks.

Now? Now he’ll claw his way back to being a better insurgent than agent. As with any endeavour, the small things matter. A toy, and not delaying the inevitable. The ball changes hands to his non-dominant one. The same side as his missing eyeball.

Throw, bounce, ca-barely dodge it hitting his face. Scrounge it up from his sheets.

He leaves the bunk, slowly seating himself cross-legged on the cool floor and refusing to wince when his knee throbs. A small disturbance, in the grand scheme of things. 

Throw, bounce, c-underhand catch.

Better. _Humiliating,_ a different part of him attempts to say, but his threshold for humiliation has been considerably raised by the events of the last month. 

Throw, bounce, catch. 

Max Gavins. The Echoes. Mercenaries are good. Mercenaries that were former soldiers are even better. Park suspects that once McCabe accepts that their futures are now joined with these insurgents’, they’ll remember the same CIU history analyses that occupy his mind.

Throw, bounce, catch.

When it comes to planet-wide governments and armies of the IGR’s caliber, let alone one that spans galaxies, there’s a known truth: Insurgencies don’t win.

Throw, bounce, catch.

He knows better than to say that in front of any of the others. Especially not the captain.

Throw, bounce, catch.

Not all of it is based on the IGR’s version of history. He was an analyst before the war. Albeit not one senior enough to dodge the draft. Long before the job, he spent hours interrogating which states succumbed to their threat models and which endured, scouring the net and all sorts of sources. One hardly aimed for the CIU on a whim.

Throw, bounce, catch.

Too easy. He shifts further back from the wall. 

Throw, bounce, accidental second bounce off his shoulder into his lap. Pick it up.

Workable. The same knowledge can be put to a different purpose, though _purpose_ sounds a bit loftier on this ship than it used to in his head. A different means of survival, then. (Whose survival? Could he cover Shelly at this distance, would she even want him to try?)

Throw, bounce, catch barely made with the pads of his fingers.

He amends his earlier statements. Insurgencies don’t win alone. They don’t win with academics and smugglers and small groups of mercenaries and teenagers training civilians, no matter how foolhardy or competent. 

Throw, bounce, catch.

Insurgencies win when they turn into civil wars.

“We need an army” is what Violet - the spy one - had said. He suspects what she meant was “We need their army.” Former soldiers are a mere start. To have a chance at victory, they would have to cleave the IGR’s army in two, gain defectors not only from the grunts but of the likes of colonels and generals, and do it all without handing the dwarnians an easy opening to wipe out humanity.

He drops the ball. It rolls off somewhere, and Park rubs his temple, thumb unimpeded by his eyepatch strap. That too is somewhere on his bunk. No one here to be distracted by its absence from his face. 

The unavoidable realization makes him clench his teeth. Nine _Iris_ reports released to the public net and that comment about PR and Recruitment. It’ll be their responsibility, splitting the IGR’s army. What’s their argument for the average IGR citizen? The IGR was about to start a war with the dwarnians, would you like to start a war among humanity instead? We promise it will turn out well. 

People like Gavins and his orphans and the Echoes have nothing to lose. People like McCabe’s brother? A skeptical huff escapes Park. 

It took the Violet Liu on this ship being left for dead. It took Park getting sent to Zone Z. It took McCabe getting lumped together with Park’s refusal to kill Krejjh. If the IGR plays it smart, they won’t hand out opportunities like that at scale.

Yet. He leans back against the edge of his bunk, and finds his mind sketching out the past and present networks of everyone on this ship, contorted to fit against that blank grey wall. The rhythm is familiar. His fingers itch to type.

There is, it turns out, plenty left for Park to mine. 

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Day 6 of TSCOSI Week 2021, for the prompts Park/Betrayal: https://tscosi-week.tumblr.com/post/638667991780933632/prompts


End file.
